


Which For Several Reasons We Won't Mention

by cherryroad (summerstorm)



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Flashback, Gen, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-06
Updated: 2009-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerstorm/pseuds/cherryroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little gen story about how Ted really met Barney, based on <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/comment_fic/34096.html?thread=6900016#t6900016">this prompt</a> at <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/comment_fic/"><b>comment_fic</b></a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Which For Several Reasons We Won't Mention

Barney was a suited-up man long before he met Ted.

This is the story of _how_ he met Ted, and why he wasn't in a suit when that happened.

Yeah, I know, you already how they met. At the MacLaren's urinals, and then Ted pretended to be deaf and stepped on Barney's game and lost him a bimbo.

That's not how it happened.

After that story ends and the kids go to bed, Ted's wife sits next to him on the couch with a glass of chocolate milk, because some things stay with you forever.

She says, "You've never actually told me how you two really met. You keep saying there's more than meets the eye, but I don't see you delivering."

"And I don't intend to do so anytime soon."

"Oh, come on, it can't really be that bad."

"It's not—" Ted interrupts himself. "No, it is really that bad, and I know you'll use it against him. And me."

His wife chuckles. "I have enough ammunition to mock Barney for a lifetime. I'll keep this a secret."

Ted turns to look at her. Such a beautiful woman. He's kind of in love with the little wrinkles around her eyes. It's what he's always wanted, loving someone until their skin doesn't smooth itself down after they stop smiling. He hit the jackpot with this one.

He holds out his hand. "Pinky promise?"

"Oh, so it's interesting," his wife says, snuggling closer and playing along. "Pinky promise," she says, lacing her pinky with Ted's, and then intertwining their fingers.

"I met him at a gay bar," Ted confesses.

His wife looks up, amused. "Seriously?"

"Yep," Ted says.

"Crappy plan or genuine sexual identity crisis?"

"Genuine sexual identity crisis. He wasn't even wearing a suit."

"I meant for you."

"So did I."

His wife smacks him soft on his thigh. "So why's it horribly dark and shameful?" she asks matter-of-factly. "Was there a glory hole involved?"

Ted shakes his head. "Not _that_ dark and shameful."

It hadn't been, really. It was a bright bar. Ted had been misled by it, because it was Halloween and he was looking for a crew of old Dr. X fans to head a protest against sexism in Halloween customes—he did have a cult following, despite what Marshall and Lily might say, and said cult had followed him out of Wesleyan into New York, and don't tell Lily and Marshall that.

Somehow this, and the fact that the show had been off the air and vastly underappreciated since before Ted was born, led him to assume the guys dressed up as the Bionic Woman were his people.

They were not, but they were fun people anyway. One of them had even heard of Dr. X.

"And he liked it?" his wife asks, amused. Ted's never gonna let Marshall live that down.

"Of course he did. He loved me. Him. It."

"Absolutely," his wife says, patting his forearm.

And then he met Barney.

Ted had a few margaritas on him already, and was trying to get subtly out of what he had assumed at first to be a friendly hug but he had just realized was full-on groping.

Barney was completely drunk and wearing something that, in Ted's state of mind, resembled a Fairy Godfather dress with little wings and a see-through top.

"Where my gays at?" Barney screamed, downing a glass of something that didn't look healthy in the process.

Someone to Ted's left whistled.

"Seriously?" said Ted.

"Wait, does he remember that?" Ted's wife asks.

Ted crinkles his nose. "Possibly. I don't know. He was _really_ wasted."

He was tumbling around and everything, actually, and dancing chest to chest every time someone got in his way. It was kind of cute, in a really gross way.

Ted kind of wanted to get out of there, but the buzz in his head made him too lazy to move. He needed another drink.

"I'm glad you don't include descriptions of your psychological stage of alcoholization when you tell the kids this stuff," Ted's wife says.

"I know," Ted replies.

"So," his wife continues, "that was it? You saw him, and then you recognized him years later? Did someone take a picture or something?"

Ted snorts. "No," he says. "Yes," he corrects. "But that's not how the night ended." He reminisces said night, and chuckles. "Actually, we did meet at the urinals."

"Oh, God," Ted's wife despairs. "So soon?"

"So soon what?"

"Your memory playing tricks on you. You haven't even hit sixty yet."

Ted laughs. "No, I just—I meant we did meet at the urinals, but not at MacLaren's."

Barney was coming in just as Ted was heading out, and Barney hugged Ted and said, "I'm gonna be your very best friend," and even teared up a little.

Barney always had delusions of grandeur.

"You know I love you," Ted's wife says, poking him on the side of his ribs, "but you're not that 'grand'." She pronounces 'grand' in French, except she's mocking him, except she does it perfectly. She's just as much a pretentious asshole as Ted is, but people don't accuse her of it because she appears to be making fun of herself when it shows.

Total bullshit, that.

Ted would've forgotten that night had it not been for Barney stumbling across him again at the bar.

"Oh, Christ," Ted said.

"No Christ," Barney said. "Christ is dead."

"I think you're mistaking him for his father," Ted said, chuckling to himself for a philosophical reference well done that fell completely flat on everyone else. Ted was always one step ahead.

"And so modest," his wife remarks.

"I'm just being honest here," Ted says. "It's not my fault I was like that."

"Okay, one, you're still like that, and two, whose fault would it be?"

"God's," Ted says ominously.

"Didn't you just say he was dead?"

"You're worse than the kids," he says, and his wife pretends to zip her mouth.

So anyway, they were at the bar, in a gay bar, and Barney was alone and ordering shots of tequila.

"This one's for you," Barney said, handing one to Ted.

"Yeah, no, thanks," Ted said, putting it down.

"Where's the salt?" Barney requested, disregarding Ted. "Salt, anyone?"

He was ignored.

"Skin is salty," Barney said, and licked the side of Ted's face before quickly pouring a tequila shot down his throat.

"That is _disgusting_, man," Ted said, wiping his face with someone's discarded shirt.

The memory gives Ted shivers.

Then Barney said, "Not salty enough," with a Joker-like grimace, and drank a whole glass of water in one go.

"And then I left, and that's the story of how I really met Barney for the first time," Ted says.

"That's not so bad," his wife says.

"Keep telling yourself that," he says, and ducks down to whisper in her ear, "there are pictures."

His wife jumps to her feet immediately. "Oh my God, seriously? Where are they? I thought you didn't have proof of your turn-of-the-century Halloweens."

"I—don't?" Ted says, realizing his mistake.

"I can't wait to see you dressed as Pippi Longstocking," his wife declares, and heads for the basement. "I thought I'd never see the day."

"Oh my God."

And that's the story of how Ted's wife blackmailed him into cooking for her every day of the rest of his life.


End file.
